


Hunting solo

by umbel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Background Destiel, Gen, I can't write fight scenes wow, background wayward daughters, hunting while Deaf, this fic is basically just an elaborate excuse to share a headcanon, titles are the worst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 03:07:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8873434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/umbel/pseuds/umbel
Summary: Sam's not jealous of what Dean and Cas have going on. Of course not. He just thinks it'd be good to find himself a backup hunting partner, and he knows a hunter who could maybe use one too. Only problem is, Eileen's not so convinced she wants to work with Sam.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted a 'verse in which Destiel happens and it doesn't really change the show/format at all - except for the fact that feeling a little sidelined prompts Sam to work on forming a stronger support system for himself.
> 
> I've done a fair bit of reading about Deaf culture for other things (...hopefully enough to not screw up anything really obvious), but I don't have any connections to the Deaf community. If you do, and anything in this fic is wrong or weird or makes you uncomfortable - or you'd be willing to beta/sensitivity read for future Eileen ficlets - please tell me!

Things are pretty much the same after Cas finally moves into the bunker (and, which Sam does not comment on because he is the best brother, almost immediately moves into Dean's room). The three of them hunt together once or twice a month, but Dean and Sam still end up taking most of the cases they find, and they all maintain the polite fiction that this is entirely because sometimes you need instant access to, say, the bunker's records on Sumerian spellcraft, and it's a lot faster if the guy on research duty happens to be fluent in ancient Sumerian. There are a few hitches; once or twice Cas has almost taken a hammer to the subtext with the unnervingly sincere grin that usually precedes something like "completely understandable, given your upbringing" (or worse, " _codependency_ "), but Dean's learned how to shut him up quick now, so they make it work.

Sometimes, though, Dean hunts with Cas, and Sam's not invited. Dean's got standing dibs on the milk runs - because yes, they do occasionally find a case that's as clear-cut as it reads in the paper - and the two of them will pack a bag and roar out in the Impala, coming back a little bit bloody, a little bit bruised, and full of stories.

Sam finds things to do while they're gone, listens avidly to the play-by-play when they're back, and tries not to think about the post-Stanford era. The hunts he didn't regret missing until afterward; Dean trailing off mid-reference to unfamiliar cases, the silence between them awkward with an edge of bitter.

Dean's happy about this, maybe happier than Sam's ever seen him, and Sam's careful to react in all the right ways and all the right places so that they never do feel awkward about it, but it's weird, that's all. It's weird to know there's a hunt happening and not be on it - weird in a way that bothers him more now than it ever did before, but he's not jealous. Dean can have his own life. That's a good thing, that's what Sam wants for them: a life where together doesn't have to mean glued at the hip. He's absolutely okay with this.

So it's pure coincidence that two minutes after Dean and Cas are out the door for a salt and burn in Nebraska, Sam opens up his laptop, and two hours later, he's scrolling through the list of contacts on his phone.

The list is short, and most of the people on it are… not something he's going to think about right now. Mary's out of the question, of course, as is Jody. The two of them, plus Donna and the girls, won't get back til Sunday, Jody said ("A beach, an actual _beach_ , with sand and an ocean and water that isn't ten degrees on a good day. Do you know how freaking long it's been since I had a real vacation? Or some mother-mother bonding time? Call if you need any of us, of course, but you better be damn sure you need us."). That leaves the only other hunter Sam's talked to in the last few months.

> S:     _Hey Eileen, are you working on anything right now? Found a series of animal kills in Heath OH and Dean's out on another hunt. I was thinking about checking it out, but Dean'll kill me if he comes back and I'm out without backup._  
>    
>  E:     _sorry! I'm actually tracking a vampire nest atm, and I'm not sure how long it will take_  
>    
>  S:     _oh how many? you want a hand?_  
>    
>  E:     _3 left, but 2 are just turned. I should be ok_  
>    
>  S:     _you've got the cure I sent you right? that's a lot easier with two people_  
>    
>  E:   _I'm used to hunting alone, I make it work. :)_  
>    
>  S:     _you'd rather hunt alone than with backup if it's available?_
> 
> E:     _I'm fine_  
>  _thanks though_

Sam frowns down at his phone. Hunters can be a prickly antisocial bunch, and very few take well to friendly concern along the lines of, "Hey, no offense but I can't see you taking down three vamps by yourself?" He remembers the fierce way Eileen gripped her knife, like she had something to prove; there's nothing he can say here that's not gonna sound like he thinks she's weak because she's a woman - or worse, because she's Deaf.

So Sam says nothing, and goes to make some lunch. Back at the retirement home she told him she'd been going solo since sixteen, and you don't make it that long without getting a pretty good sense of your limits. Dean and Cas will be back in a few days to work the Heath case with him, and maybe he'll ask her again the next time he finds a hunt.

When he comes back to his phone an hour later, though, there's another text waiting for him; his eyebrows lift in surprised amusement as he reads it. 

> E:      _I don't know if you can keep up with me tbh_
> 
> S:     _you know I've been hunting at least as long as you have, right?_  
>  _I think I can keep up fine_

(A ;) face almost makes it onto the end of Sam's second text, in what is fortunately a very brief lapse of sanity.)

It takes another four minutes before a response from Eileen finally comes through.

> E:     _so don't take this the wrong way_  
>  _I just don't really hunt with hearing people_

* * *

 

He makes it to Missouri by about 9 pm, meets Eileen in the weed-infested back parking lot of a long-abandoned mall. She's leaning against her car, eating a donut by the glow of a camping light set up on the trunk. "You know," she says, "usually when people buy a new car they go for one that's, um, newer."

He glances back at his ride, then grins and meets Eileen's eyes. "Nah, we've still got the Impala. This is… well, actually it's an old Men of Letters car. Dean keeps 'em running, long story."

"Legacies get free gear? No one told me."

"Only by accident. Like I said, long story. You been waiting a while?"

"Just two donuts." She glances down at the donut box, mouth twisting. "Stress eating. Look. Just so we're clear, I'm still planning on going after these vamps alone. I can let you know when I'm done, see if you, I might be able to help you. But I'm fine on this one."

Sam nods, keeping any lingering concern from his expression. "I get it. Not here to step on your toes, I swear."

"It's just easier to show you what I was talking about, and you said you were in the neighborhood."

He nods again without elaborating, in case she doesn't ascribe to the loose Winchester definition of "in the neighborhood." Eileen was more than cryptic enough to get him curious, and there isn't anything pressing waiting for him back at the bunker. "We sparring inside or out here?"

"Inside."

They slip inside through the busted lock on the back door, and Eileen leads the way to a store on the corner of the first intersection. Sam touches her shoulder before she reaches out to haul up the metal security gate. "Mega Bounce Party Zone, huh?" He gestures up at the storefront.

"It's got the best open floor space. Most of the others are full of broken glass." She moves around the big room, turning on more portable lights she must have set up earlier. "I went through the whole place last week looking for the nest before I found them on the other side of town."

Eileen doesn't look back up at him until she's done and standing with her back to the dusty, cluttered reception counter, which effectively squashes further conversation on his part. He takes the chance to stretch after five hours in a cramped car before taking a stance opposite her.

"Here's the thing about vampires," she says when they're both ready. "Super hearing, right? And to be honest, I'm not that good at sneaking up on people. So I make sure that doesn't matter."

Eileen shifts, and Sam tenses for her attack, but she leans back instead, her hand reaching as if to brace herself against the counter. He hears the click of a latch behind her - and then hears absolutely nothing. He hears nothing, he is drowning in nothing, an absence of sound so complete it's like a wall that's slammed down between him and the rest of the world.

A fist buries itself in his stomach, legs kicked out from under him as he doubles over. Pain lances through his knees when they hit the floor, and Dean's gonna bust a gut laughing when he hears about how easy his moose of a brother is going down, but that thick glaze of silence paints all of this with a weird dreamlike quality that makes it hard to focus enough to fight back. He's immediately back up again and swinging, but she parries well and then something very weird and _alarming_ happens to his wrist. Sudden torque slams him against the floor, with a knee ground into the small of his back and his right arm immobilized with the elbow locked. When he tries to push himself back up, swearing soundlessly, the grip on his wrist shifts fractionally and sends a jolt all the way up to his shoulder that has him immediately go limp again in surrender. He hasn't seen this hold in so long - or anything from that martial art, cool - that he's drawing a blank on how to wriggle out of it.

Besides, he's _way_ more interested in however the hell Eileen managed to press mute on the universe. Whatever it is, it's left him stone deaf and still pretty disoriented - and yeah, touché on that. If her fighting style is meant to disable everyone else in the room, hunting partners probably _are_ a liability.

"Okay," he finally says. "Uncle," he says, but of course no sound comes out, and Eileen can't hear him anyway, and his cheek is pressed so hard into the gross carpet that he can taste dust and grease on his tongue. He waves his free hand in the hopefully universal sign for _stop_ , and after a moment her grip loosens enough to let him pull free. Sound comes pouring back into the world again as he hauls himself up off the carpet - his labored breathing, crickets chirping somewhere in the mall, distant barking and the faint rumble of a train.

They just stare at each other for a moment: Sam, eyes wide, looking faintly poleaxed; Eileen, gaze cool and steady and nowhere near as smug as he was expecting. He wonders, as he's getting his breath back, how many hunters she's done this to. How they reacted. He thinks about the donuts, the tense line of her back as she straightened up from the car, the way she avoided his face so he couldn't talk until she was done.

"Yeah, okay," he says. "I definitely can't keep up with you." He grins ruefully, swiping a hand through his tangled hair, and Eileen seems to relax a little. "What the hell was that?"

She offers up a faint smile in return. "Long story." Her hand reaches behind her to touch something on the high counter, and he's definitely not successful at avoiding a twitch of alarm when he recognizes the painted sigils of a curse box, because her expression goes closed off again.

"It's not actually cursed," Eileen says. He must not look convinced. "Should I have opened with that? I've seen the parameters for the spell. No compulsion, no killing, just an enchantment. The box is just the only thing that I know for sure turns it off. Like I said, I hunt alone, so. No one to help me test out other options."

He's pretty sure she's not a suicidal idiot, he'd been pretty much expecting something like this… but even so, when he reaches out to open it, only the tips of his fingers touch the wooden lid. All sound drains away again as he pops the hasp on the lock, revealing a small clay bird whistle inside, its paint a cheerful yellow against the black interior. Sam closes and latches the box again, just as careful, and the sounds of the mall return. Unlatched, with a sliver of space between the box and its lid, and silence blankets the store. Even when Sam knows it's coming, it's still so unnerving; he tries not to shiver, feeling vaguely like there's something stuck in his ear.

Huh.

"Holy crap," Sam says. He starts to latch the box again, then realizes it doesn't really matter and lets the lid fall back against the counter instead. _Holy crap_ , he says again, speaking silence into silence, and Eileen reads his lips and sees the delight bubbling up on his face, his hands twitching with suppressed gesticulations.

 _Okay_ , he mouths. _You've gotta tell me where you found this, what kind of range it's got - you're sure it doesn't do anything nasty? - what else you're using - are you using anything else? I'd never seen anything like that Celtic trap before, either. This is brilliant, seriously. This is smart. But first_ \- and he has just enough presence of mind to slow down, make sure she can read this - _can we leave this on and do that again a few times? Is that okay?_

The grin that spreads across her face then is wide, blinding, and one of the best things Sam's seen in a long time.


End file.
